Finished My First Commute Today!
 

But it wasn't by choice. lol

It's a shade over 5 miles to work. Half the trip is residential streets, the final half is a fairly busy, two lane each way road. My wife works in the same town as me, about a mile away. My commuting plan is to go in to work on Monday with my wife and take my bike and work clothes which consist of shorts or jeans and a t shirt or sweat shirt. I would then bike home and then commute by bike every day. On Saturday I would bring my work clothes home in a bag. Since I'm going home I don't really care about carrying the bag around while biking.

Anyway, I've been training for this for a few weeks and was planning on making the jump in a week or two. My original goal was to get this going by Labor Day but my plans got sidetracked.

My wife leaves at 6:30am and I usually don't leave till 7:30am. I don't even get up until after she leaves. As I'm heading out the door I grab the keys and see that only my wife's keys are on the counter. I'm praying she took my car so I rush to the window. Nope! She took her car and my set of keys which have the keys to both cars. Her set only has keys for her car so I was SOL.

I called work to tell them I would be running a few minutes late. I took my work clothes off and put them in a backpack and then changed into my cycling gear. I got to work about 15-20 minutes later then I normally would. I cooled down for 5 minutes then changed into my work clothes. Did my job, changed back into my cycling gear and came home. Round trip about 11 miles.

I guess my wife didn't realize that the long metal shark shaped bottle opener was on the keys she took. lol

Oh well. I'm thinking about just bring my work clothes tomorrow and throwing them in a locker and then start biking on Wednesday.

Good job! Sounds like you might have been overthinking it a little, and needed a "push" to get started. :thumb:

:thumb: Nicely done!

Welcome to the club! Long may you ride! :D

I just didn't want to be a sweaty mess. lol It's only in the past few days that the fall temps finally kicked in so it's better cycling weather. Even with the lower temps I was sweating but I was also going pretty hard and also had the backpack on.

I do agree though, that little push helped!

Well done! Sometimes all ya need is a little push. I ride 11 mi from PJS to SBU and have had very few problems with motorists, even coming home very late (11 PM -1 AM occasionally.) Even when I ride 347 at rush hour, most people are cool.
Anyway, 11 miles isn't all that much for a RT, no reason to to take all your stuff with you and ride whenever you can, don't be dependent on the car/ wife.

Same road, different area. lol I'm going from Buttercup to Miller Place.

Late last night my wife's parents called to borrow her car because they were going to the other end of the island and didn't feel comfortable with their car. My wife was gonna take my car and I was gonna take my father in laws car, the one that they didn't want to take far. I'm only 5 miles from work. It was only after we swapped all the cars that we noticed my father in laws car was overdue for an inspection. I ended up donning my cycling gear to head for work at 7am today. The start was fine, just a bit of drizzle/mist. The last mile before work was a downpour but I made it fine. Luckily I sill had another change of work clothes in my locker. lol

The return trip was dry to start out but quickly became wet the closer I got to home. Luckily I tossed my wallet and phone into a zip lock to store in a bag on the bike so everything stayed dry.

One of the first lessons I learned when first starting to cycle-commute was to always pack as though it's going to pour. That way anything less than a torrent is a bonus. :thumb:

Btw, congratulations on making the jump. Cycle-commuting's addictive. Welcome to the world of the cylcologically challenged. :p

Starting commuting is like first jumping in the water. Once you're in, it's nice.